Where Does The Average Worker Spend Their Time?

February 28, 2017

There’s Only So Much Time in A Day

If you were to chart out where you spend your time while at work, what would your pie chart look like? Would it surprise you to know that in at least one survey of 400 U.S white-collar, adult workers, it was found that an average of 6.3 hours a day is spent checking emails? Not all of these are work-related, however. In fact, the poll found it was nearly an even split, with 3.2 hours devoted to work emails and 3.1 hours to personal messages.

How many hours do you spend working, anyway? According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, we spend an average of 8.8 hours working or in work-related activities. Are we really spending more than six of those nearly nine hours checking emails?

Here’s how the Bureau breaks it down:

Interesting, huh? I’m not sure the above survey is accurate about the number of hours dedicated to emails and the Bureau certainly doesn’t give us this granular-level detail. I do know that in our own poll, 25 percent of respondents say they spend more than eight hours per month (2 hours per week) simply keeping their business organizational charts up to date. Considering there are, on average, about 44 work hours in a week, are we really willing to give up nearly 5 percent of our workweek to something as mundane as updating an org chart? We live in 2017, people. You know there are apps for that, right?

A Culture of Apps

We live in a world of apps. Check out your own smartphone and count how many apps you have downloaded on it. In January 2017, 2.2 million mobile apps were counted as being available to download from the Apple App Store. This is even more remarkable when you consider the fact that only ten years ago, not a single app was available in the same App Store. Why is that? Probably because the Apple App Store wasn’t released until July 10, 2008. That’s right, in just nine years, we have gone from zero to 2.2 million. And that’s just the Apple App Store.

Today, people have choices of where they find their apps. Depending on your device and preferences, you can download apps from alternative sites, such as Google Play, Windows Store, Amazon and Blackberry. Google Play rivals the Apple App Store with nearly 2.6 million apps at last count. So, if we only consider the top two app stores, we’re at nearly five million app options. Mind blowing.

You have to assume that of more than five million potential apps out there, there has to be one that helps organizations keep their org charts updated. If you made that assumption, you are correct. Thankfully with innovation and drivers such as the fact that manually updating org charts are a pain in the ass, there is most definitely “an app for that.”

An App for Keeping the Org Chart Updated in Real Time

What does it take to keep your org chart updated and why is it worth the effort? In our poll, while 25 percent of respondents said they spend at least eight hours a month keeping their org charts up to date, the remaining 75 percent said it takes anywhere from zero to eight hours. That means a significant number of organizations are spending a whole lot longer than necessary to update their org charts. How do I know this? Because if you’re using an app that was purposely built to keep your org chart updated nearly automatically, then you know the task doesn’t have to take any time at all.

This is time you can get back in your day, approximately two hours per week, in fact. Two hours per week you now have to check those emails. But what do these org chart apps really do?

When you and your team has access to the org chart app, one person is no longer responsible for keeping it updated. Employees can update their own profiles, managers can make real-time adjustments as they hire or move people around, and HR can integrate the app with HR apps to pull data automatically into the org chart. When someone is hired, for instance, their personal information is inputted into an HR system. That data is then pulled into the org chart app to add them to the organizational structure. But wait! There’s more!

Today’s org chart apps can do more than just diagram an organizational structure. The days of PowerPoint and Visio are over. Organizations can do so much more with a modern org chart app than they ever could with PowerPoint and Visio. Why? Because those apps were meant to draw pretty pictures of positions and layers of management. They weren’t created for and can’t keep up with the dynamic nature of a company.

Only a purposely-built, design-based organizational chart app can give companies the scalability, flexibility and automation that they need to accurately represent the employee base in real time. Only these apps can allow countless employees to use and update the org chart in real-time at the same time. Only org chart apps can allow users to get the most out of the org chart and share what they need with others so easily. And only org chart software like this can turn the company org chart into a valuable resource that is used on a daily basis by all employees.

From Hardly Used to How Did I Ever Live Without It

If you’re in HR, you may say you use your org chart. If you are in management, you may reference it occasionally to look at headcount. For something that takes up to 5 percent of the workweek to update, shouldn’t it be used more often by more people?

If you’re using older software, particularly software that was intended primarily for other uses such as creating presentations, there hasn’t been much of a reason for employees to use the org chart. New hires may take a look to see where their box sits in the hierarchy but the typical employee doesn’t see the value. Maybe one of the reasons for this apathy is because they know there’s a high likelihood the org chart isn’t accurate, despite all of your efforts to keep it updated.

Unless you are using real-time org chart software, there’s always going to be an issue of accuracy. In order for the org chart to be truly valuable, it must be in real-time all of the time. Users must know it is the golden record of truth for the organization. They shouldn’t need to worry about having the right version.

When you use cloud-based, modern org chart software designed specifically for employees to get the most out of the org chart, you see employees actually wanting to use the org chart. What do these org charts do that previous software failed to do?

Interactive org chart software presents the organization as a living, breathing entity. Employees can see who reports to who, of course. But they can also see employee photos, get contact information to instantly connect with an employee, use Google-like searches to find specific skills or people in an instant. They can keep their own profiles up to date, inputting personal and professional details that help others find them. They can access their company org chart, employee directory and all of the functionality from their mobile device.

In a nutshell, the org chart becomes one of their most used apps. That’s saying something when we remember they have access to more than five million apps. Perhaps the most attractive feature of modern org chart software is that it’s actually fun to use. Employees enjoy adding personal tidbits, such as favorite restaurants and hobbies. It personalizes and humanizes their name and title. It helps them build rapport with fellow workers as they discover new things about each other, things they have in common.

This kind of functionality isn’t found in PowerPoint or Visio. Only modern org chart software relieves the administrative burden of many HR administrators and managers and gives employees the opportunity to be more self-sufficient. It’s a social app as much as it is an administrative app. When you bring in the social side to the administrative side, you get an app people want to use.

by Cameron NouriI am the Director of Growth at Pingboard. I consider myself an entrepreneur at heart. I love trying new things and taking educated risks on new ventures, both professionally and in my personal life. I bring that passion to work everyday where I enjoy helping others discover the power that Pingboard can unlock.